Welcome

Thank you for visiting my legislative website. It is always an honor to serve the people of the 16th Senate District in the Illinois General Assembly. On my website, you can learn more about me and the issues I work hard to address for our community and our state. Your opinions are important to me, and I urge you to contact my Springfield or Chicago office if you have any questions or concerns.

CHICAGO – State Senator Jacqueline Y. Collins (D-Chicago 16th) is encouraging Southside parents and anyone concerned about lead found in drinking water at three 16th District elementary schools to attend meetings being held this week to discuss the problem. She also urged a speedy House vote on legislation the Senate passed last month to require lead testing in schools and improved communication with the public in the wake of the preventable drinking water disaster in Flint, Michigan.

“I’m determined that we will learn from Flint and work quickly to protect our young people from this poison,” said Collins, a chief co-sponsor of the legislation (Senate Bill 550). “I commend CPS for its proactive lead testing regimen, and I believe it’s important for parents in our communities to educate themselves about the dangers of lead, ask questions and keep the pressure on until no child is drinking unsafe water.”

Ingestion of lead is associated with serious developmental delays, especially in young children. The danger is more acute in older buildings, where lead pipes and chipping lead-based paint may be found. While there is no safe amount of lead to consume, the federal government has adopted an “action level” of 15 parts per billion as a threshold for mitigation. Senate Bill 550 puts this limit into state law and requires the Illinois Department of Public Health to establish a program to identify lead hazards in schools statewide and make sure they are corrected as quickly as possible. It would create a legal obligation to inform parents and guardians whenever elevated lead levels are found in the drinking water at their children’s schools.

When CPS tested drinking water supplies at Harvard Elementary School, Parker Elementary Community Academy and Wentworth Elementary School, some samples in these buildings contained lead levels that exceeded the federal threshold. The school district is holding meetings around the city this week to discuss the lead testing program and its next steps to protect students from lead. These include a meeting this Thursday at 6 p.m. at Corliss High School at 821 E. 103rd St., and another on Friday at 4 p.m. at Simeon High School at 8147 S. Vincennes Ave. They are free and open to the public.

“I encourage parents and caregivers – especially those with children who attend Harvard, Parker and Wentworth – to attend if possible and to ask tough questions,” Collins said. “I also urge my constituents to join me in asking the House to pass and the governor to sign legislation ensuring no community in Illinois becomes the next Flint.”

“If our solution involves picking the pockets of the poor and wrongly accused, we have more than just a fiscal problem; we have a moral problem.”

SPRINGFIELD – State Senator Jacqueline Y. Collins (D-Chicago 16th) has secured passage of legislation that expands and eases access to the legal process for the expungement and sealing of criminal records – a major hurdle for individuals seeking to gain employment and move on with their lives after an encounter with the criminal justice system. The measure lifts a ban on expungement petitions by people with prior but unrelated criminal records, eliminates all fees for juveniles applying for expungements and waives fees for individuals in Cook County who were wrongfully arrested or convicted and now seek expungement.

“For the sake of justice, we must end this practice of charging individuals money to clear their names and move on with their lives when our criminal justice system has concluded they did not commit the crime for which they were arrested,” Collins said. “Illinois is suffering from a shortfall in revenue, but if our solution involves picking the pockets of the poor and wrongly accused, we have more than a fiscal problem; we have a moral problem.”

The fee to petition for expungement in Cook County is $120. Collins hopes to expand her pilot program to Illinois’ other counties, where fees can be as high as $400. House Bill 6328, which Collins worked with Representative Art Turner and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart to craft, would waive fees for juvenile expungement requests statewide. There would be no fee for adults petitioning in Cook County when the individual was arrested but then released without being charged, the charges were dropped or a criminal conviction was reversed. According to Sheriff Dart, 19 percent of those detained in the Cook County Jail at any given time are released after the charges against them are dropped. Finally, the legislation allows individuals to petition for expungement of a new arrest or charge, even if they already had a criminal record.

“These reforms speak to the fundamentals of our justice system, which is based on evidence, not assumptions,” Collins said. “Limiting access to those with no prior record is a policy based on stereotypes and fear, not facts. We must reject laws that create a population assumed to be a criminal class – chained to their past arrest records, always under suspicion and perpetually poor.”

HB 6328 has cleared both chambers and now goes to the governor’s desk.

SPRINGFIELD – State Senator Jacqueline Y. Collins (D-Chicago 16th) voted today for legislation she co-sponsored to keep essential social services afloat while budget negotiations continue. The measure, which releases $715 million set aside in a number of state funds for human services, passed the House and Senate today with overwhelming bipartisan support and now goes to the governor’s desk.

“While the fight for full funding is not yet over, today’s action is an encouraging sign and a lifeline extended to a wide variety of vital services for our at-risk youth, our food-insecure seniors and other vulnerable residents,” Collins said. “If the governor signs this measure into law, it will finally provide relief to organizations that have been working without pay to serve the ‘least of these,’ even as they themselves have been held hostage.”

The legislation, Senate Bill 2038, funds Youth Build and other youth employment programs, homelessness prevention and affordable housing, Adult Redeploy programs that help ex-offenders take advantage of a second chance, breast and cervical cancer screenings, meals for low-income seniors and much more.

“Especially as Chicago sees alarming levels of violence this year, it is essential that the governor lend his signature to releasing these resources to keep our young people off the streets and show them a different path,” Collins said. “I look forward to working with my colleagues to build on the progress we’ve made today and achieve sustainable budgets for this year and the next.”

SPRINGFIELD – State Senator Jacqueline Y. Collins (D-Chicago 16th) has introduced legislation to ban auto insurance companies in Illinois from basing their prices on a customer’s credit score. The Senate Insurance Committee heard from advocates yesterday about the role this practice plays in exacerbating existing racial and socioeconomic inequalities and helping fuel the self-perpetuating cycle of poor credit.

“It’s absurd and unacceptable that in Illinois today, a person with poor credit but a perfect driving record pays, on average, substantially more for car insurance than a person with great credit and a drunken driving conviction,” Collins said. “That certainly doesn’t make our roads safer or create incentives for responsible driving, and it makes it even harder for people who are in debt to drive to work so they can get out of debt.”

Consumer Reports magazine and the Consumer Federation of America extensively researched the relationship between credit scores and auto insurance rates and found the following:

• Nationally, people with low credit scores are charged car insurance premiums that are substantially higher – in some cases more than twice as expensive – than people with high credit scores, even when other factors such as age, gender, zip code and driving record are identical

• In Illinois, a person with poor credit and no record of traffic violations pays on average 51 percent more per year for car insurance than a person with excellent credit who has been convicted of a DUI

“For many Illinoisans, auto insurance is not an optional purchase; it is what allows them to get to work so they can earn income and get out of debt,” Collins said. “A credit score is a predictor – and an imperfect one at that – of a person’s ability to repay a debt; it was never designed to predict driving behavior. The same communities of color hit hard by redlining, subprime mortgages, the recession and the housing crisis are still needlessly paying more for a basic product their residents need in order to rebound.”